“It doesn’t work if you bring in the hallelujah chorus,” said Thea Lee, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning Washington think tank. Lee served on a short-lived manufacturing council that Trump established early in his presidency.
Associated Press
April 15, 2020
And they may also not understand the odds against them. An Economic Policy Institute report finds that employees win more than one-third of the time in federal courts but only about a fifth of the time with mandatory arbitration. There’s a big disparity in damages awarded, too. The typical mandatory arbitration award ($36,500) is much less than the median award in the federal courts ($176,426).
Who. What. Why
April 15, 2020
A watchdog group called the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has found that for the first time since World War II, the federal government’s debt will exceed the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP). The Committee’s president conceded that, “combating this public health crisis and preventing the economy from falling into a depression will require a tremendous amount of resources – and if ever there were a time to borrow those resources from the future, it is now.” However a non-partisan Congressional group called the Joint Committee on Taxation concluded that as part of the $2.2 trillion economic stimulus package that just passed, Senate Republicans snuck in a tax relief plan that exclusively benefits millionaires – to the tune of $90 billion tax dollars this year alone. Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said, “It’s a scandal for Republicans to loot American taxpayers in the midst of an economic and human tragedy.” Meanwhile a coalition of 180 groups led by the Economic Policy Institute on Monday sent a letter to Congress demanding it pass a $500 billion fund to provide immediate relief to state, local, territorial, and tribal governments.
Rising Up with Sonali
April 15, 2020
If national trends hold true in North Carolina, about 20% of newly unemployed individuals fit into one of those categories, according to an April 2 report from the Economic Policy Institute.
Winston-Salem Journal
April 15, 2020
Even as Northam brags about signing strong civil rights measures this session, he ignores the civil rights element to the pro-labor bills he’s “postponed”: that women and people of color are most likely to be public employees, and most likely to be minimum-wage workers. The Economic Policy Institute recently reported that public-sector employees in Virginia are mostly female (57.5 percent), and that the share of black workers (20.9 percent) is higher than in the private sector (17.9 percent). “Women and people of color make up the majority of our workforce generally, and are most likely to be our ‘essential’ personnel” [in the pandemic], says Delegate Jennifer Carroll Foy. The state’s Legislative Black Caucus also asked Northam to sign the pro-labor bills, but despite the fact that the group essentially saved his political career after his blackface scandal, he didn’t listen.
The Nation
April 15, 2020
Also real is the economic emergency that workers, families and small businesses face. At some point, Washingtonians will get to the other side of the COVID-19 crisis and begin a long economic recovery. Already, economists are attempting to forecast the national economic picture for the months to come. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects a 12 percent unemployment rate by the end of June, dropping only to nine percent by the end of 2021. The Economic Policy Institute projects an unemployment rate around 15 percent by the end of June for the country and Washington state. January’s unemployment rate of 3.6 percent seems like a dream.
South Whidbey Record
April 15, 2020
The Economic Policy Institute projects that people of color will be the majority working class — working people without a college degree — by 2032. And while not everyone wants to go to college, poor reading scores can cause shame, and cut short aspirations for those who do.
Colorado Springs Independent
April 15, 2020
The proposal drew support from Josh Bivens, research director for the Economic Policy Institute.
Common Dreams
April 15, 2020
According to Economic Policy Institute, the U.S. unemployment rate may hit 16% by July, which is higher than any point since the Great Depression.
KCRA
April 15, 2020